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With the governor expected to sign the new bill, Oregon would be the first Western state allowing farmers to grow hemp.

A spokesman for Gov. Ted Kulongoski said he plans to sign Oregon’s new hemp legislation, Senate Bill 676, into law. When that happens, Oregon will become the seventh state to allow farmers to grow hemp. And it will be the only one in the continental United States west of the Rockies. Hawaii’s governor signed a similar law this month, and Maine’s governor did the same in June.

State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Eugene Democrat who championed Oregon’s hemp bill, did the same thing every session going back to 1997. Just as the issue moved from the fringes to the mainstream in Salem, Prozanski said he thinks recent action in statehouses, along with growing public acceptance of hemp as an industrial resource, will help compel Congress and the Obama administration to follow suit at the federal level.